§ 247. The imperative mood represents an action as a command, urging, request, exhortation addressed to one's interlocutor^). It is a direct expression of one's will. Therefore it is much more 'subjective' than the indicative mood. Its modal meaning is very strong and distinct.
§ 248 The imperative mood is morphologically the least developed of all moods. In fact, the grammeme write, know, warn, search, do, etc is the only one regularly met in'speech (as to don't write, do write see 'Syntax', § 389). The 'continuous' and 'passive' opposites of this grammeme (be writing, be searching, etc; be known, be warned, etc.) are very rare J.
L. g. Be always searching for new sensations (Wilde). Be w a r n e d in time, mend your manner (Shaw) 2.
§ 249. Though the system of the 'imperative' mood does not contain 'person' opposemes, it cannot be said that there is no meaning of 'person' in the imperative mood grammemes On the contrary, all of them are united by the meaning of 'second person' because it is always to his interlocutor (the second person) that the speaker addresses his order or request expressed with the help of imperative mood forms. Thus the
1 So rare indeed that R. Lees and E. KJima write: "... there are no
imperatives with the have + Pie or be + Ing formatives: Do Ø *Have
done it *Be doing itt" (Language. 1963, p. 221).
2 See Ë. Ñ. Á a p x ó ä a p î â, Ä. À. Ø ò å ë è í ã, op cit., p. 210.
meaeing of "second person" is a lexico-grammatical meaning (See § 148) common to all the imperative mood grammemes. This meaning makes it unnecessary to use the subject you with predicate verbs in the imperative mood. But sometimes you is ised for emphasis, as in Don't you do itl (see Note, p. 222).
§ 260. Some linguists are of the opinion that Modern English possesses analytical forms of the imperative mood for the first and the third person built up with the help of the semantically weakened unstressed let, as in Let him come, Let us g o, etc.
G. N. Vorontsova gives a detailed analysis of these constructions 1 to prove that they are analytical forms of the imperative:
1) Sentences like L e t' s I e t the newspaper reporters take
a crack at her (Gardner) prove that unlike the second let
which is a notional verb the first let is devoid of lexical mean
ing.
2) It is quite possible to treat the objective case pronouns
in the sentences Let ò e be frank, Let h i ò look out, Let them
both see, as the subjects.
3) An order can be addressed not only to the second person
but to the third person as well.
Compare: Someone make an offer — and quick! (Barr). Let someone ò a k e an offer.
4) The recognition of the /e^-constructions as the analytic
al forms of the imperative would make the imperative a de
veloped morphological system.
All these considerations are serious enough. Still there are some objections to these constructions being regarded as analytical forms of the imperative.
1. There is some difference in meaning between Go! and
Let him go. In the second case no direct urging is expressed as
it is typical of the imperative mood.
2. Cases like Do not let us ever allude to those times 2,
with the word-morpheme do, alongside of such sentences as
Let it not be doubted that they were nice, well-behaved girls
(Bennett), without the word-morpheme do, show that let
| 1 Qp. wt , p 250—258. 2 Ã. Í. Âîðîíöîâ; |
p ~2M—2t>».
p î è ö î â a, op. cit, p. 257.
has not yet established itself as a word-morpheme of the imperative mood.
To be on the safe side, we shall assume that the /^-constructions are analytical words in the making.